Augustus, a startup building a federally chartered clearing bank, said it has raised $180 million in a funding round that values the company at $1 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from Hummingbird Ventures, QED Investors, and investors including the founders of Nubank, Ramp, Circle, and Deel. The company said the fresh capital will be used to expand its U.S. dollar payments infrastructure as stablecoins reshape the global financial system. While much of the market’s attention has been on stablecoin issuers, Augustus is targeting correspondent banking, a less visible but critical layer of financial plumbing. CEO Ferdinand Dabitz said the bottleneck in financial services distribution sits at the clearing bank level, adding that traditional clearing systems are slow, do not operate around the clock, take two days to settle, and shut down on weekends.

BlockBeats reported on July 21, citing market chatter, that Moonshot AI’s Kimi is said to be discussing a pre-IPO fundraising round at a $50 billion valuation. The brief item did not include details on the size of the financing, potential investors, or how far the talks have progressed. No additional terms were disclosed in the source material. The report was presented as a market message rather than a formal company announcement, and the linked source did not provide further documentation or comment from the company.

Market data on Binance showed a sharp intraday move in the AERGO perpetual contract, which fell 18.63% in a short span and briefly touched $0.01777 before rebounding to around $0.02. AERGO spot on Coinbase also saw a short-lived decline during the same period, then recovered to about $0.021. The move was reflected across both derivatives and spot trading venues, based on the quoted prices in the source report.

Morgan Stanley, described in the source as Wall Street’s largest wealth management firm, has filed an application for a spot Solana ETF with a 0.14% management fee. The filing names several service providers, including Figment, Galaxy Blockchain Infrastructure, and Coinbase Canada, and says 95% of reward income would be passed through to fund shareholders. At the same time, SBI Global Asset Management has launched a tokenized Japanese equity fund on the Solana blockchain. The SBI-JX fund is aimed at institutional and qualified investors and offers on-chain access to a high-dividend Japanese stock strategy. According to CryptoBriefing, the two developments point to broader adoption of blockchain technology in traditional finance.

The Joint Maritime Information Center, or JMIC, said on July 21 that the threat level for the Strait of Hormuz remains at “severe.” The update was carried by BlockBeats and cited Jin10 as the source of the information. No further details were provided in the brief. The note was published as a 7x24 flash update.

Binance Futures will automatically settle the AERGOUSDT USDⓈ-M perpetual contract at 14:30 on July 24, 2026, before removing the trading pair after settlement, according to a ChainCatcher newsflash. The exchange will also stop users from submitting new non-reduce-only orders starting at 14:00 on the same day. Binance advised users to close positions before trading stops in order to avoid automatic liquidation. The update covers the settlement timing, the order restriction window, and the delisting arrangement for the contract.

Aztec Network, an Ethereum Layer 2 focused on private smart contracts, said Tuesday that Alpha V5 is now live on mainnet. The company described the release as its fastest private transaction system to date, saying a fully private transaction can be proved in about 2.5 seconds on a consumer laptop while fees for a fully private token transfer fall below $0.05. On its Alpha V5 page, Aztec says that is 2x faster than V4 and 50% cheaper. Those figures, however, are self-reported and have not been independently benchmarked. Aztec said proving speed matters because proofs are generated on a user’s own device rather than on a server that could see transaction details. The company also said Alpha V5 resolves critical issues found in V4 and cited testing by more than 234 researchers through the Cantina bug bounty. The release follows Aztec’s earlier alpha network and public testnet. Apps are set to start rolling out this week, beginning with Nyx, a wallet that connects an existing Ethereum wallet for private transfers on Ethereum and private yield on Aave. Nyx is typically invite-only, but Aztec said access will be open to everyone for 24 hours. The company has not published a reproducible benchmark for its speed or fee claims, and it has not specified how many live apps beyond Nyx are available yet.

Binance Futures said it will automatically settle and delist the USDⓈ-MAERGOUSDT perpetual contract at 06:30 UTC on July 24, 2026, according to an official notice. Users are required to close their positions by 06:00 UTC on the same day. After that cutoff, new positions will no longer be allowed. The notice lays out a clear timetable for traders still holding the contract ahead of its removal from the platform.